Mongoose pushed back up, determined to get more distance between himself and the enemy. A machine-gun opened up as he did. The hollow pop-pop-pop sent him back into the dirt, diving around to face them though he knew, he hoped, the bullets weren’t aimed in his direction. Another gunner began firing— he realized they were automatic rifles, not machine-guns; AK-47s most likely, though Mongoose had never actually heard one off a firing range before.
There were shouts; probably the commander told the men to stop wasting their ammunition, though the pilot couldn’t understand the language.
The soldiers had been spooked by the trees or something. That he could understand.
As they resumed the search, the Iraqis’ shadows fluttered up from the ground, devils emerging from some ghost hole. Dark, over — sized rifles loomed out at him, their barrels searching for his heart. The pilot reached for his pistol and gripped it tightly. He told himself they couldn’t see him. More than likely, they would inspect the area near the road, fire a few more shots to flush him out in case he was nearby, then pile back into the trucks and go on.
Logically, he knew that was what they would do. But it didn’t make it any easier to crouch here, less than a hundred yards away, listening to their grunts and the chink of their equipment as they began searching the area. They cursed loudly. One seemed to trip; again the desert exploded with small arms fire.
The searchlight swung wildly around the area; the dim edge of its shadow reached to within inches of where he had been when he first spotted them.
He had to get up over this hill. Here he was in range of their searchlight. Sooner or later, a sweep would find him.
Mongoose glanced down at the gun in his hand. Only its vague outline was visible, but he could feel it heavy and slightly moist, as if it was sweating.
It was him, not the gun. He was colder than hell and thirsty besides, yet water was streaming from his pores.
If they came for him, should he fire? With surprise on his side in the dark, he could take out two or three before the others knew what was happening.
What then? Could he escape the hail of bullets that would follow?
There was another clip in his pocket. Burn the first one, reload, take them all on?
Yes, that was what he would do.
It would mean he’d die. Inevitably. The odds were stacked. There were at least a dozen shadows in the distance. Sooner or later they would find him and they wouldn’t be inclined to show mercy.
Nothing in Iraq is worth dying for.
Better to be quiet, better to hide. His job was to survive.
His job for Kath, and for Robby.
To survive. That was what the Air Force told him. Survive. Don’t do anything stupid. You’re not Rambo.
And that’s an order.
But no way he could give up. Shit, that would be worse than living. Tortured, used for propaganda and God knows what.
In the dark, in the desert, they’d never find him. They might search a few yards around the trees, no more. He had to get up over that hill.
Mongoose held his breath and got up slowly, watched the shadows for a second, then began moving up the hill in a crouch-walk.
He’d gone about six feet when the Iraqis began shouting again. The search beam swung past the trees in the opposite direction.
Now was his chance.
He had just taken a step when the searchlight swung back toward him.
CHAPTER 32
Everybody in the Air Force had their own specialty. In A-Bomb’s humble opinion, the candy men— the crew dogs who took care of getting bombs onto the planes— were probably the best guys at making chili. He had no theory to explain this, beyond the obvious connection with their profession. There was, at the same time, an inverse relationship between chili quality and geographical origin. A-Bomb had never met a chili chef who’d been born further south than Reston, Va., which was not, per se, a chili-making town. This bomb loader— Sergeant Harris P. Slocum, to be exact— was a case in point, hailing from Milwaukee. Slocum, who was happy to share his chili with an obvious connoisseur, had no explanation for it either.
The sergeant and Chevy, an airman buddy of his, had traded the chili for a pair of A-Bomb’s Devil Dogs, and had thrown in a can of real Coca-Cola as well. A genuine bargain, as far as A-Bomb was concerned, given that the Devil Dogs were a bit mushed. The pilot was so overwhelmed by their generosity that he offered them his last Twizzler licorice sticks as well.
“You’re a walking candy store, sir,” said Slocum, lounging on the dragon that loaded shells into the A-10A’s cannon. “So they let you fly with all this stuff in your suit?”
“Never tried to stop me. You got some more of this chili?”
“All you want, sir,” said Chevy. “Hang on a second.”
He trotted over to a small wheeled vehicle that usually held iron bombs but had been pressed into duty as a kind of tool cart. The back had a pair of coolers— one with hot food, one with cold. A battery rig had been hooked up; a Mr. Coffee was just squirting water into its pot.
A-Bomb thought it was damn good to see ingenuity like that so close to the front lines.
“Buddy of yours went down, huh?” Slocum asked.
“Yeah. I got a bead on him, though. We’ll pick him up before the sun comes up.”
“Tough country up there.”
A-Bomb shrugged. Chevy returned with a fresh cup of chili. It wasn’t a cup, exactly— they used old MRE cans as containers. You had to make sacrifices due to the war and all.
“What’s it like to get shot at?” Slocum asked.
“Shot at?” A-Bomb took a mouthful of the chili. Maybe it could have used another hit of cayenne. “Nothing, really. Hadn’t thought about it.”
“You don’t think about it?” asked Chevy.
“Nah. Mostly what you think about is, how can I wax that son of a bitch for having the balls to try to shoot me? That’s what you think about. That and, maybe I should’ve had the Boss on instead of Nirvana.”
“The Boss?” asked Chevy.
“Bruce Springsteen. You guys never heard of Springsteen?”
“Well, uh, sure we did, sir,” said Slocum. “But, uh, you listen to music while you’re flying?”
“Doesn’t everybody?” A-Bomb got up and showed them his customized Walkman hookup, which he had wired into his suit. They whistled in admiration. “Nothing like listening to ‘E Street Shuffle’ while you’re pounding Saddam’s pissants. Uhmm, you figure that coffee’s ready now?”
His stomach full and thermos loaded with the security crew’s coffee— a little weak, but no sense complaining— A-Bomb did a careful preflight of his Hog. The plane’s stores had been reloaded; its gas tanks, made of a special bag-like material and protected by a fire-suppressant foam, were now filled to the brim. Four Rockeye II cluster bombs had been slapped onto the hardpoints. The big drum that fed the cannon was packed with bullets, and A-Bomb had even managed to scrounge a few plastic-wrapped generic brand cupcakes to refurbish his survival pantry.
Moving from front to back, A-Bomb checked over the plane carefully. He ran his hands across the wings and ailerons, feeling the metal. The plane had flown all day over Iraqi territory, and hadn’t caught a whisker of flak. He gave the big fan jet a pat, moving to the forked tail at the rear of the plane. He touched it gently, almost kneading the metal the way an experienced cowboy might massage a trusted but slightly tired horse. Then the pilot gave the right rudder a good hard slap and continued around the plane, making sure she was ready to go. He gingerly touched the pitot head, used to measure airspeed, and practically saluted the AN/ALQ-119 ECM pod that hung off the right wing — A-Bomb believed in wallowing in the mud, but there was nothing wrong with sending out a good swath of electronic interference while you were doing it, especially when the enemy was spitting flak and missiles at you.